This proposed project investigates the historical development of modern insurance in East Africa between 1945-1996. British insurers played a significant role in the development of insurance business in the region. They opened up their regional offices in Nairobi and agencies in different parts of East Africa, intentionally to cover settler’s investments and their lives. The insurance agencies of East Africa were the most prominent non-bank financial intermediaries between the 1940s and 1960s. However, there is scanty research on the activities of British insurers in East Africa. This project seeks to examine agencies of imperial-based companies activities in what constitutes today’s Kenya and Tanzania.

The newly independent government in East Africa embarked in economic transformations in the 1960s. In Tanzania, the Government nationalised the insurance business and other economic sectors in 1967. This was done purposely to ensure the state controls over large surpluses from the insurance industry, which had been taken out of Tanzania. Insurance activities were placed under the state-owned insurance company, the National Insurance Corporation of Tanzania Limited (NIC). The Uniformly Government of Kenya ordered all agencies and brokers of foreign-based insurance companies to be locally incorporated, ostensibly, for the local investors’ benefit. The proposed study intends to debate state interventions by using localisation and nationalisation of the insurance industry in post-colonial East Africa.

It should be noted that international organisations such as the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD) offered training programs and advice on the formation of domestic regulatory frameworks in East Africa. For instance, Kenya’s government requested the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD) to support the drafting of a law regulating the insurance industry. This project shall dissect space of the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and Role of Africa Re as Africa’s Multilateral Initiative on the development of insurance industry in Kenya and Tanzania during the state’s implementation of privatisation policies in the early 1990s.

The proposed study aims to answer the following questions; how did British insurers expand in East Africa after the First World War? Why localisation and nationalisation as the state’s interventions, transformed the insurance industry in East Africa? How has UNCTAD contributed to the formation of regulatory frameworks and insurance policies in Kenya and Tanzania? To what extent African ways of managing risks hindered the expansion of the insurance industry in East Africa?

Regarding sources, the study will rely on Archival documents from the National Archives of Tanzania and the East Africana section of the University of Dar es Salaam’s Library in Dar es Salaam. Also, Kenya National Archives and Africa Re Nairobi. UNCTAD files will be examined at U.N. Archives. Other sources will be collected from corporate archives such as The Aviva archive in Norwich, the United Kingdom and Britam Insurance Office records in Mombasa, Kenya (formerly was an agent to British American Insurance Company). Some of the government documents will be accessed from the Kenya Insurance Regulatory Authority (KIRA) National Insurance Corporation LTD (Tanzania), Insurance Regulatory Authority and Kenya Deposit Insurance Corporation.